This hive was showing signs of a high varroa mite count; it was on solid bottom board so we couldn’t do a drop count. But the inspection of drone brood indicated lots of mites and bees were spotted with deformed wing virus. The decision was made to treat the hive a few weeks back.

In between collecting swarms we checked on our new hives today and treated them with “Api Life Var” the organic mite treatment, the mites counts have been low but we have been told that treating a hive with low brood is more effective. So lets see what happens. So in summary this is what we[…]Read More

It’s almost spring here in New Zealand so I am looking at treating the bees soon for varroa mites. So far I have found these available in New Zealand:- (1) Thymovar – Thymol based waters (2) Api life Var – Essential oil and Thymol based (3) And Apiguard also Essential oil and Thymol based. I[…]Read More

Sad news today the weak hive “Mokoroa” has succumb to varroa mites. We used “Api Life Var” on the hive, but I suspect we treated too late to save them. We inspected them over the weekend and found the queen and dozens of other bees dead on the landing board. So now our bee garden[…]Read More

The honey flow has slowed down in most parts of New Zealand and hopefully you have taken all your honey supers off, and got your honey in jars for the winter months. The Time to Treat is here now, what are your plans???

This was a question posted in by one of our readers, Sophie asks:- How can a New Zealand beekeeper keep their bees alive every year? Well this is a good question, over recent times bee-keepers are having trouble keeping bees alive. Due to Varroa mites and pesticides in the environment. Last year our plan failed[…]Read More

Well today was the day to treat the bees, my package from BeeGreen arrived today. I have placed a wafer in the top of Mokoroa. You break up the wafer into two pieces, but the way I opened up the package it became four pieces 🙂 I closed off the Screened bottom to help the[…]Read More